Monthly Archives: April 2015

This Easter, home video audiences are celebrating the miraculous resurrection of Duke Mitchell’s GONE WITH THE POPE, the long-lost follow up to the smash hit MASSACRE MAFIA STYLE! At last, the cult hit hailed as “a glorious masterpiece” (Detroit Metro Times) is here on home video!

Legendary nightclub entertainer, crooner and “Mr. Palm Springs” Duke Mitchell stars in GONE WITH THE POPE as a gangster with an unholy scheme: to kidnap the Pope in exchange for the ransom of a dollar from every Catholic in the world! Duke Mitchell filmed GONE WITH THE POPE in 1975, but the movie was left unfinished at the time of his passing in 1981. Sage Stallone and Bob Murawski of Grindhouse Releasing rediscovered GONE WITH THE POPE in 1995 and vowed to save it from obscurity. Academy Award-winning film editor Murawski (THE HURT LOCKER, SPIDER MAN 1, 2 & 3, ARMY OF DARKNESS) spent 15 years completing GONE WITH THE POPE from the surviving film elements. The result is the Holy Grail of Exploitation Cinema!

GONE WITH THE POPE played exclusively in 35mm at theaters and festivals around the globe for five years. The film has played repeatedly to an enthusiastic cult audience at the Quentin Tarantino-owned New Beverly Cinema in L.A. and the fantastic story of its unlikely rescue and restoration was featured in Variety, LA Weekly, Movieline, and the Los Angeles Times.

Now Grindhouse Releasing has at last answered years of worldwide demand for GONE WITH THE POPE on home video with a stunning deluxe Blu-ray/DVD set…and it’s a hit! Customers are already calling it the cult Blu-ray release of the year!

Available now, along with Grindhouse Releasing’s acclaimed, best-selling new Blu-ray editions of MASSACRE MAFIA STYLE and Lucio Fulci’s THE BEYOND, Duke Mitchell’s GONE WITH THE POPE is being hailed as a miracle by fans and critics alike!

“There’s miracle work, and then…well, there’s this Blu-ray disc. I cannot get over how phenomenal Gone with the Pope looks in high-def. The clarity and staggering level of detail outclass just about every last Blu-ray release I’ve come across, regardless of age, budget, or marquee value. An absolutely incredible effort…Gone with the Pope is one of a kind: crude, violent, offensive, unapologetic, deeper than it lets on, and a hell of a lot of fun. I doubt if there’s any other filmmaker, dead or alive, who could pull this off the way Duke Mitchell does. I defy anyone not to be floored by the complete package that Grindhouse has assembled here, one that’s twenty years in the making. The visual and aural presentation eclipse anything I ever could’ve dreamt possible for a lost production like this, and the sprawling selection of extras hammer home just how much of a labor of love this is. Highly Recommended.” – DVD Talk

“Gone With The Pope is testament to how ambition and passion are always more important than a big budget or a famous cast. It’s a film like no other, an eighty-two minute barrage of ideas that are simultaneously insane and profound as Mitchell takes on the hypocrisy of organized religion without ever really writing off the spiritual side of life. It’s a skewed and strange vision to be sure but it’s relentlessly entertaining, as politically incorrect as they come and really just a wild ride all together. Grindhouse Releasing have rolled out the red carpet for the film, giving it the best possible presentation and jamming the disc with extras that are as interesting as they are comprehensive.” – Rock! Shock! Pop!

“Grindhouse Releasing kills it with this release of a long lost and unfinished film that will turn in to a classic piece of exploitation. A beautiful restoration job and lovingly packed with special features, GONE WITH THE POPE is a must own for any exploitation film fan!” – Celluloid Terror

“Grindhouse Releasing’s work here has resulted in one of their finest achieve­ments. They went beyond hon­or­ing a film’s legacy here: they actu­ally res­ur­rected, restored and fin­ished an aban­doned work. They really earned their tag as “the Criterion Collection of exploita­tion” with this impres­sive set.” – Schlockmania

“I’m happy to say that it was worth the wait. Gone with the Pope – as well as Grindhouse Releasing’s presentation of it – surpassed any expectation that I had. Very weird, very 70s, and very much the product of an individual who knew exactly what he wanted. It’s a shame that Duke Mitchell didn’t live long enough to see his work get the treatment that it is getting now, but he can rest easy know that it is in great hands and it looks f*cking amazing. Another indispensable release from Grindhouse Releasing.” – Paracinema

Grindhouse Releasing is a Hollywood-based film distribution company co-founded in 1996 by Sage Stallone and Academy Award-winning film editor Bob Murawski. Devoted to preserving, restoring and releasing the best in exploitation cinema, the label has earned the rep of “The Criterion Collection of cult” for its no-expense-spared restorations of such celebrated Italian horror films as Lucio Fulci’s THE BEYOND, Umberto Lenzi’s CANNIBAL FEROX, and Ruggero Deodato’s CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST. Through the Box Office Spectaculars imprint, Grindhouse has released David Durston’s I DRINK YOUR BLOOD, Lucio Fulci’s CAT IN THE BRAIN, and J.P Simon’s chainsaw classic PIECES.

In recent hyears, Grndhouse Releading has entered the Blu-ray market with acclaimed special editions of Amos Sefer’s AN AMERICAN HIPPIE IN ISRAEL,starring Asher Tzarfati and Shmuel Wolf, Robert Hartford-Davies’ CORRUPTION, starring Peter Cushing, Sergio Sollima’s THE BIG GUNDOWN, starring Lee Van Cleef and Tomas Milian, and the #1 best-seller CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST, starring Robert Kerman and Carl Gabriel Yorke. In 2015, Grindhouse Releasing won the Satellite Award for Outstanding Overall Blu-ray/DVD for its special edition of Frank Perry’s THE SWIMMER, starring Burt Lancaster, which includes the original documentary “The Story of THE SWIMMER” by Academy Award winning film editor Chris Innis (THE HURT LOCKER).

Grindhouse Releasing once again scored a #1 Amazon best-seller in 2015 with the lavish 3-disc Blu-ray/CD release of Lucio Fulci’s THE BEYOND, sure to top the list of the year’s best horror discs. MASSACRE MAFIA STYLE and GONE WITH THE POPE are among the most long-anticipated titles in the Grindhouse Releasing catalog and the lvish Bu-ray/DVD sets are rapidly gaining acclaim as some of the studio’s finest work to date. Grindhouse Releasing is also the most active independent theatrical distributor of classic horror and exploitation films in the U.S., handling Sam Raimi’s original classic EVIL DEAD and other genre landmarks in addition to its own catalog of titles. Upcoming Blu-ray releases from Grindhouse include CANNIBAL FEROX, out May 12, and more to be announced soon!